


The Moondancer

by Kriseis



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Dance of the Dragons, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-25
Updated: 2014-03-25
Packaged: 2018-01-17 01:03:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1368187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kriseis/pseuds/Kriseis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is ready to fly. She has been for a long time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Moondancer

Baela is only eight years old when her dragon egg hatches. Rhaena is her twin sister, and they are like in this as they are in all things. Or as they _have_ been in all things, until this critical point of divergence, when one hatchling emerges bold and strong and already walking on its own legs, and the other slithers out of the egg withered and sickly and dies within the hour. In the days and years following, Baela can feel her sister’s eyes upon her. She knows that Rhaena would never wish harm on her or Moondancer, but maybe she wishes that Moondancer were hers. They’ve given Rhaena a new egg, and she prays constantly for it to hatch, but somehow Baela can feel that it never will. Maybe Rhaena can feel it too.

Moondancer grows quickly. By the time Baela is ten, she is perhaps not large enough to carry a grown man in armor into battle, but that isn’t what Baela wants, anyway. She rides through the forest alone when she can slip away from her lessons and shake off the guards that her father insists follow her everywhere. Moondancer isn’t really big enough to fly with a rider, yet, but she doesn’t need to fly in order to hunt. The first time she lunges for a fawn with Baela on her back, she almost screams and has to cling to her neck to stay mounted. It’s not a singular event, though, and soon she becomes accustomed to hunting with her dragon.

When King Viserys dies, Baela and Rhaena are huddled in Rhaena’s chambers listening to Princess Rhaenyra’s screams as she labors, even though Her Grace’s rooms are almost halfway across the castle. Nobody comes to tell the girls what has happened until the pieces have already been set in motion. They don’t feel that this is fair. After all, they are pieces themselves. ( _Pawns. They are pawns, and they can pretend all they like, but it won’t change the truth. On dragonback, they might have been great warriors, but they are only little girls waiting on Dragonstone, watching the fire to see who rises from the ashes._ )

They know that a war is raging around them, but they hardly feel that anything has changed at all. They know what is at stake, they truly do, but they are only three and ten, and the way the grown-ups search for riders for the dragons feels to them like nothing but a tourney. And what better prize is there than a dragon? They cling to this, pretending that they are in a song and that their family is not ripping itself apart around them.

They pretend as long as they can, but Luke is dead, and as much as they try they just can’t forget it. They’ve grown up together, played at kissing, raced their dragons. Rhaena was to marry him, one day. And now he is dead. But their father does not weep. Instead he grows angry. And when Prince Daemon Targaryen grows angry, there is no stopping him. When they hear that their cousin Prince Jaehaerys is dead, both girls pretend that they do not know the truth. Jaehaerys was younger even than they are, and it hurts to imagine that their father is responsible for his death. But there are few lies they can tell themselves to explain the satisfied smile on his face when the news arrives. It is even more difficult to imagine another explanation for his words. _A son for a son._ They pretend not to know, but they both do, and as afraid as it makes them to think that their father is capable of such cruelty, it some how makes them feel safer, too. They know they aren’t as important as Luke, but they still wonder, _who would he have killed if someone killed me?_ The war is raging, but they feel there is no way to lose. Even if Sunfyre takes to the skies again, even if mighty Vhagar comes to Dragonstone himself, Aegon and the greens will not be able to beat Father.

Then Jace is dead, too, and they aren’t so sure anymore.

When they send Rhaena away, off to the Vale with Joff and a whole clutch of dragon eggs, Moondancer is suddenly all she has. She knows the war is going badly, that Rhaenyra may not win, that in her current state of mind, maybe she shouldn’t. Baela is glad that her sister has been sent to safety. Dragonstone isn’t really safe anymore, and at least this way maybe one of them will survive this bloody war. Rhaena gets so excited when they tell her. Except that what they tell her is that she is to help defend the Vale. _How are you supposed to do that?_ Baela thinks spitefully.You have no dragon.

She instantly feels bad for thinking it, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

Baela wishes that Moondancer were bigger, or that she were lighter. Maybe then she would be able to fly with the others. Another dragon in the sky might make all the difference. But she is told that Moondancer cannot yet bear her weight in the sky. She thinks they might be wrong, but she doesn’t want to take the chance. If flying will hurt her dragon, she will content herself with staying on the ground, and watching, and waiting. But she can only wait for so long.

* * *

She has known that Aegon was missing. She never expected him to come _here_. But still he comes. She hears the shouts outside and knows what has happened. Moments later, she is standing alone in her chambers, a girl of three-and-ten, as men are searching for her door. This is all wrong, those men are _Targaryen_ men, they serve her family - but they are greens, not blacks. Do they mean to kill her? They might. If she fights them, they will. Outside the window, a flash of blinding gold briefly lights up the sky, and she remembers the great beast Sunfyre who she has seen only once. He has taken to the sky again, and both he and his rider are well enough to fight. She can hear the men at the door, armor clanking, footsteps growing ever nearer. And she doesn’t know what to do.

And then she does. Lady Baela Targaryen squares her shoulders and grits her teeth, and when the men sent by Aegon II smash her door to the ground, they find only an empty room.

She slips through the window and lands lightly on the rooftop below. As she crouches low to hide in the shadow of the tower she’s lived in all her life from a king who is of her own blood, staring across the yard full of traitors, she is struck once again by the terrible _wrongness_ of it all. Baela feels a bit sick to her stomach. _We are going to burn ourselves to the ground and leave the smallfolk to sift through the ashes._ When she looks toward the gate and sees the guards posted around the stable, she holds back a smile. Aegon is not stupid - he has not forgotten the dragon. But his effort is in vain. She knows how to get there without being seen - she’s been doing it for years.

She could find her way to Moondancer’s stall in the dark, but when she pulls herself through the back window that accompanies all of the dragon-stalls, the large enclosure is empty. Her heart stops for a moment. _Did he come for her already? Wouldn’t I have known?_ But when she heaves herself back outside, huge leather saddle slung over her shoulder, she sees bright black eyes glinting at her out of the woods before her.

She runs her hand over the dragon’s head twice - _a dragon is not a pet_ , her father would tell her, but she knows that, of course she isn’t a pet, she’s so much more - and rests her forehead against a hide so warm it almost burns. Moondancer nudges her more gently than anyone but a dragon rider would ever believe, and they both know what they have to do.

She saddles Moondancer and climbs onto her back as she has done a thousand times before, but they both know that this time is different. _She isn’t ready_ , they’ve told her over and over again, but what she’s always heard is _you’re not ready_. They were wrong.

She is ready to fly. She has been for a long time.

Baela Targaryen and her Moondancer rise into the sky over Dragonstone for the first and last time. Even as they take off, she can hear shouts from below her, and knows that she reached her dragon just in time.

She sees that golden glint again, and when she and Moondancer turn their heads as one, their eyes fall upon Sunfyre the Golden, about to make his triumphant descent upon her home.

Outrage flares within her.  _You have no right. You were never the Prince of Dragonstone, and you are not my king._ For one heavy moment they linger in place, wings beating heavily, as she struggles with what to do. They could fly away right now, and make their way to King’s Landing. They could at least get to shore, where Aegon’s men wouldn’t find them. She could get away, she really could - Moondancer is smaller and faster than Sunfyre, and the larger beast can’t be entirely recovered.

But she is Daemon Targaryen’s daughter, and she will not flee.

* * *

_“They met amidst the darkness that comes before the dawn, shadows in the sky lighting the night with their fires. Moondancer eluded Sunfyre’s flames, eluded his jaws, darted between his grasping claws, then came around and raked the larger dragon from above, opening a long smoking wound down his back and tearing at his injured wing. Watchers below said that Sunfyre lurched drunkenly in the air, fighting to stay aloft, whilst Moondancer turned and came back at him, spitting fire. Sunfyre answered with a furnace blast of golden flame so bright it lit the yard below like a second sun, a blast that took Moondancer full in the eyes. Like as not, the young dragon was blinded in that instant, yet still she flew on, slamming into Sunfyre in a tangle of wings and claws. As they fell, Moondancer struck at Sunfyre’s neck repeatedly, tearing out mouthfuls of flesh, whilst the elder dragon sank his claws into her underbelly. Robed in fire and smoke, blind and bleeding, Moondancer’s wings beat desperately as she tried to break away, but all her efforts did was slow their fall.”_

-Archmaester Gyldayn

The Princess and the Queen, by George R R Martin

* * *

Sometimes she wonders how she knew, all those years ago - how the name _Moondancer_ came to her. The dragon’s scales were pale green, and her eyes a strangely bright black, and nothing about her seemed to fit the name, in the opinion of many on Dragonstone. But Baela always knew that the name was right. She wishes that it hadn’t been.

She doesn’t wake for days after the fall. After that, she drifts in an out of consciousness for at least another week. It might be more, but they won’t tell her. She should have expected it - she did fight their king, after all - but it still feels strange to be denied something so simple by the kindly maester she’s known all her life. She is an enemy, now. A rebel. A _soldier_. She shivers. _I am not a soldier. I just wanted to protect my home._

And now her dragon is dead.

She feels it as soon as she fully wakes. There is something missing that has always been there, even before her egg hatched, because that egg was placed in her cradle the day she was born, and she had it with her always. The hole in her could mean anything, she tells herself, but doesn’t believe it. She knows the truth.

Moondancer is gone.

Her dragon is dead, and it’s her fault. It was Baela’s choice to try to fly her small dragon into battle against Sunfyre the Golden. She could have gone the other way. They could be in King’s Landing by now. With breaks, they could have flown all the way to the Vale - they could be safe with Joff and Rhaena and Lady Jeyne. But really, she couldn’t have, not Baela. Not Prince Daemon’s daughter, not the last dragonrider in the castle when Aegon came to take it. She lost her dragon, but still she feels that she did what she had to. She wonders if Aegon understands that. She doubts it.

* * *

She stays locked in that tower room for many months. They still won’t tell her anything, and Aegon never comes to see her, not once. Baela doesn’t find this very kingly - they may have fought, but they are kin, and she knows she gave a worthy fight. That’s the only explanation she can come up with for his silence: that he is ashamed that a girl of three-and-ten and her horse-sized dragon were an honest threat to the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms.

(Later, she learns the true reason, but of course Aegon’s men don’t tell her then that she has killed Sunfyre the Golden, who is said to be the most splendid dragon ever to fly in the skies above Westeros. Aegon avoids her because if he saw her, he may well try to throttle her, and he won’t give his enemies another kinslaying charge to throw at him.)

She was badly wounded by the fall, but she knows that someday she will be taken from these chambers, and when she does, she wants to leave on her own legs. So she practices, alone and with the reluctant maester, and teaches herself to walk again. Perhaps they will come for her when the war is well and over, and they decide that she must be killed for resisting the takeover of Dragonstone. Maybe they will give her over in marriage to an ally in order to keep her docile. She never imagines that her release will be what it is.

She’s sitting by the window, looking out at the view that shows her only ocean, when her door bursts open without so much as a knock to announce a visitor. She lurches to her feet and spins around, and she has never been so astonished to see someone as she is when she find her little brother Egg standing in her doorway with a gold crown resting on his head.

She doesn’t have time to open her mouth before his arms are around her. He’s more than two years younger than her, but her head still doesn’t quite pass his shoulder, so she can’t see a thing until he pulls away, and that is not for a long moment. As she stands, shocked, in his embrace, her mind reels. What is he doing here? How did he get past all the guards? And, above all: _why is there a crown on his head?_

Then she is free; someone gently tugs Egg away from her and pushes him to the side, and she nearly weeps. Her sister smiles at her a little, and Baela almost doesn’t recognize her. How can that be? They are twins, after all, their faces are the same. _But her face has changed._ It is weathered, almost lined, though she is only four-and-ten. For them, the war started out as a mock tourney, but it came to them and took away everything but each other.

Perhaps Baela wouldn’t even recognize her _own_ face anymore. She doesn’t know. She hasn’t been allowed a mirror.

Rhaena doesn’t hug her. They always huddled together as children, but both have lost this desire for contact since they last met, and somehow each knows that it is the same for the other. Instead she reaches into the bag that hangs over her shoulder and draws out a pale green dragon egg. She steps forward to press it into her twin’s hands, and when their eyes meet, they understand each other.

They both know their eggs will never hatch. Rhaena doesn’t mind so much, anymore, and Baela is glad. She loved Moondancer with all her heart, but in the end, dragons have only ever brought her family pain.


End file.
